Thirty years of (housing) hurt: reflections on 1996

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London, 1996. I had finished University and headed back to the capital along with two great mates who had I had made during my 4 years in Hull. I only stayed back at my parents’ home for about a week before we moved together into a house in Tooting. 

What strikes me now is the speed and simplicity of this move. We phoned up a letting agency, they showed us the house, we decided to sign. No rent guarantees, references or online verification – and no requests to the ‘Bank of Mum & Dad’. We just paid a month’s deposit and the keys were ours.

A golden time

Despite being 3 stops further down the Northern Line than we had hoped (Clapham was too pricey for us), the Tooting terraced house was perfect. With three double bedrooms, a big kitchen and large lounge-dining room, it was great for both parties and indoor cricket, and we made full use of its potential.

In retrospect, it feels like a golden time. Political change was in the air as Tony Blair’s New Labour contrasted with the weak and sleazy Tories. Bands like Suede, Oasis and Blur were the soundtrack to long bank holiday weekends of beers and footie on Clapham Common. Cool Britannia felt like a thing.

The show Fantasy Football was massive and presenters Baddiel and Skinner’s Euro’ 96 anthem Three Lions embodied the cultural rise of football. Watching Gazza’s Scotland goal, the 4-1 demolition of Holland and the win on penalties against Spain, it felt like football did come home.

Drama

None of us were earning much but we had enough.  I had got a job as a Key Worker supporting homeless people in a new and chaotic hostel for 140 people in Hackney. Every shift was full of drama and I came home with plenty of stories. But it was a terrible place which taught me about the difficulties of helping people stuck in an institution that made their lives worse.

Danny Boyles’ groundbreaking film Trainspotting, about a group of Edinburgh heroin addicts, was also released that year. Everything about the film became iconic: the breakthrough cast, the marketing, and the soundtrack which blended the retro of Lou Reed and Iggy Pop with the contemporary Britpop of Pulp and Sleeper.

Overdose

But the film had extra resonance for me because I was working with so many real-life heroin addicts. On a shift just a few days before seeing the film, I found one of my key-residents dead in their room following an overdose. She had only just choked on her own vomit and my efforts to resuscitate her were just too late. 

It was tragic and just as grim as some of the scenes portrayed in Trainspotting – but it was for real. What made it worse was my colleague, when she saw what had happened, just left me to deal with the situation alone. I will never forget her walking away saying ‘Sorry, I’m not paid enough to deal with this shit.’ 

Turning points

1996 also signalled two key turning points in my life. I had volunteered for many years on a children’s holiday club in Islington and that summer, the church which hosted the club asked me if I would consider moving onto the Marquess estate to live in a flat above their new church community centre.  It meant leaving our Tooting house but it turned out to be one of the most significant decisions I ever took.  I learnt more about the reality of poverty and putting my faith into action than anything else I have ever experienced.

I also took my first step into management as my employers wanted someone to set up a winter night shelter in the famously posh town of Tunbridge Wells in Kent. I was keen to leave the Hackney hostel but was only 25 so was a bit disconcerted to find myself welcomed as ‘an expert from London’. But it turned out to a memorable experience as we had to deal with huge local controversy to open the shelter on one of the town’s most exclusive roads. So much happened I later wrote a trilogy of blog posts about the experience.

30 years on

1996 was a great year in many ways. And one thing that prompted me to reflect on that year is that I became a dad when I was 30 which means my oldest son is now the same age I was during that summer. 

He is also commencing post-university life and it got me thinking – is life better now than it was back then?

Its probably impossible to say, but one issue that is definitely worse is the unaffordability of housing.  The Tooting house me and my mates lived in was worth £80,000 back then; it now costs ten times that amount. This crazy inflation has created understandable generational bitterness because it has made life so difficult for younger people whilst lining the pockets of older people.  Houses have become the idols that society worships – and, as the Bible shows, idolatry always leads to injustice.

Rocketing house prices has destroyed community and made the homelessness crisis far worse than it was then. Back in 1996, working in homelessness was quite a niche job but the ‘homeless sector’ was ballooned since with countless charities trying to fill the gap caused by housing injustice.

In 1996 football came home. In 2026 far too many people need a home.